blogging in between sunbeam naps

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About Me

I'm Katje van Loon. I'm a writer, an author, a poet, and a menace to society. I am also an activist, a feminist, a geek, a knitter/crocheter, and many other things. I wear a host of hats. I've been blogging off and on (mostly on) since 2004. One of my first blog iterations was The Canadian Pagan, and I used to go by Jagged on Blogdrive.

This blog, Amoeba Kat Musings, has existed in many different forms and permutations since 2008. It's always been my writer-blog (ie, where I blog as Katje van Loon, Writer), but as time has gone on what I want to blog about as a writer has evolved. It's still evolving.

What you will find here, likely: posts on feminism and dismantling the kyriarchy. Politics. Fat acceptance. Pictures of my dog. Posts about my husband-type-person. Poetry. Me geeking out. Knitting. Occasionally, book reviews. And much, much more.

I try to be diligent about trigger warnings, but I don't put everything behind a cut. Read with caution.

(I do put spoilers behind cuts.)

On a side note, I am also an Ambassador for Barefoot Books, along with my mom. Barefoot Books supplies high-quality children's books via its ambassadors and online shop. I have been a collector of children's books for many years, and I'm excited to grow my collection with the help of Barefoot (and to help others grow their collections, too).

If you want to become an ambassador, click on the picture below to join my team.

If you just want to buy some awesome kids' books, click on this picture:

If you decide to become an ambassador under me, or buy books via the above link, you are supporting me and by extension my writing.

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The Linguistics of Relationships

Standard

Recently my boyfriend got new bathmats for his bathroom. This is good, because the old one was getting kind of manky. It was white. I disagree vehemently with white things for the house. They get dirty easily. Rather, they show dirt easily, and, when it comes to cleaning, I’m a lazy bitch.

His new mats are black, round, soft, and decidedly not-manky. There are two of them, overlapping like a Venn diagram. (“This mat is wet, this is dry, and where they meet they are both wet and dry.” —Venn, the most boring kid ever.)

Me: You have new thingies in front of the shower. They’re nice.
Mr. Katje: New showermats, yeah.
Me: …new what?
Mr. Katje: Showermats. Mats for the shower.
Me: You mean bathmats.
Mr. Katje: No, because there’s no bath. There’s a shower. Showermats.
Me: …the word bath doesn’t…that’s not…argh. There’s no tub, but there is a bathing space in the bathroom, and the mats go in front of the bathing space. Hence, bathmats.
Mr. Katje: No. Showermats. We shower. We don’t take baths.
Me: We bathe in the shower, which is in the bathroom. Bathmats.
Mr. Katje: You’re wrong. We don’t bathe in the shower; we shower in the shower.
Me: (sighing and giving up) Yes, dear.

I may outwardly capitulate for his sake, but I know I’m right. So does Firefox’s spell-check — it recognizes bathmats as a word, but not showermats. Obviously I’m correct.

(Whenever we spawn little amoeba-kittens, I’m going to have to be proactive so they don’t pick up his weird language. “Remember, kids, daddy is silly.”)